EXPERIMENTAL DEMONSTRATION OF ADVANTAGE OF MOTION INDUCED SYNTHETIC APERTURE RADIOMETER

Aperture synthesis with platform motion has been presented as a useful tool to achieve the high spatial resolution imaging. Using a motion induced synthetic aperture radiometer (MISAR), a passive microwave image can be achieved with a small number of antennas. Moreover, the MISAR is capable of imaging better than the case without motion, using the same configuration of antenna array. With a platform motion, visibility can be sampled more efficiently, and as a result the imaging performance of the MISAR shows higher quality than the case without platform motion. In this paper, the advantage of MISAR is demonstrated experimentally. Using a laboratory model of inteferometric radiometer, the point source images are obtained under the condition with platform motion and without platform motion. In the experimental results, the point source response of the MISAR shows better quality of sidelobe level and beam efficiency than the case without platform motion.